Film Review Round-Up: A Simple Favor & Mile 22 (2018)

I intended to bring you a full review of A Simple Favor last week but unfortunately life got in the way (and not Spider-Man on the PS4, honest) so instead this week I'm back with another review round-up. You know the format by now, two shorter than usual reviews that I hope will still give you a good taster of the film in question. First up it's the aforementioned A Simple Favor with my future wife Anna Kendrick, and then we'll take a quick look at the new Marky Mark action film Mile 22. Let's go!

We all have secrets . . .

A Simple Favor (15)

Starring: Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, Henry Golding

Director: Paul Feig

The Plot: Stephanie Smothers (Kendrick) is a wholesome single mother who runs a "mom tips" vlog but leads a lonely life. Through their young sons she's introduced to Emily Nelson (Lively), a fashion executive who's the polar opposite of Stephanie - glamorous, confident and successful - and the two form an unlikely friendship. Stephanie is stunned, however, when Emily - after asking her for "a simple favour" - suddenly goes missing and is found dead, and soon after she finds herself falling for Emily's now widowed husband Sean (Golding). However, all is not what it seems: as Stephanie starts finding clues that point to Emily still being alive, she begins digging into her mysterious past and uncovers startling secrets - but Emily is not the only one with skeletons in her closet . . .

Check out the trailer for the film here.

Review: If you've been reading my reviews here for a while (and if you have, thanks very much) you'll know that I'm unashamedly a huge fan of Anna Kendrick. I love everything about her, and if by some miracle she would ever be interested in a slightly overweight, socially awkward nerd from Wales, I'd put a ring on it immediately. As such, I'm always excited when she has a new film out, but the trailer for A Simple Favor (yes, I'm using the dreadful American spelling of "favour" as that's the film's title) intrigued me a great deal, as it seemed not only very funny but very dark as well. The wildcard for me is director Paul Feig: he did really well with Bridesmaids, but the Ghostbusters remake was awful. I haven't seen Spy or The Heat, but I'm told they were both very funny. He's a comedy director at heart and clearly enjoys working on female led films, so what would his take be on a film where the comedy is black and the story has a very dark element to it? I'm glad to report it's a success - A Simple Favour is terrific.

Right from the start, the film makes it clear that it's out to keep you guessing. This is a story with more twists and turns in it than I've seen in a long time, and while it's central twist - that of Emily's apparent death and subsequent reappearance - is fairly easy to guess, everything else is not. Both the main characters and Emily's husband Sean keep displaying both subtle and blatant shifts in behaviour, and it really does keep you guessing as to who's really in league with who and what their agendas are. If you like a film that keeps you on your toes, this is one for you - and it's incredibly funny as well, with very dark humour ("brother fucker" is a standout moment), and this suits the story perfectly as without it this would be a very different film indeed. Anna Kendrick is brilliant (you knew I was going to say that, right?), hiding the darker aspects of Stephanie's character behind layers of clutz and innocence, but Blake Lively is also terrific. Her charisma owns the film, and it's great to see her back on the big screen in such good form after the time she took off to have a baby with husband Ryan Reynolds. Emily is the darker character from the get-go, but she too has hidden layers of her own, almost an opposite of Stephanie. The film is driven by these two ladies, and it's a great result.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

An excellent, dark, funny film that's full of twists and turns and will keep you guessing right until the end. Two strong performances from Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively drive forward a well-written story that's beautifully shot to boot. Highly recommended!

Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch

Mile 22 (18)

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Lauren Cohan, Iko Uwais, Ronda Rousey, John Malkovitch

Director: Peter Berg

The Plot: James Silva (Wahlberg) is the leader of an elite CIA special forces unit known as Overwatch, called in to handle situations that the military can't. In an undisclosed Asian city, nuclear material has gone missing and the only one who knows its location is Li Noor (Uwais) - a local police officer who turns himself in to the American embassy, offering to give them the information in exchange for passage to the USA. Silva and his crew, including Alice (Cohen) and Sam (Rousey), are tasked with escorting Li the 22 miles from the embassy to an airfield where his flight awaits, but the journey will not be easy - Li is a wanted, dangerous man, and the country sends its own special forces to stop them . . .

Check out the trailer for the film here.

Review: This is director Peter Berg's fourth collaboration with Mark Wahlberg, following Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon and Patriot's Day, and it's something of a shift in tone for the pair. While this isn't the first time that Wahlberg has played a soldier for Berg, here in Mile 22 we're delving into the murky world of black ops and espionage and Wahlberg takes on a character that's a far cry from the heroic ones he's played in their previous collaborations. Now, I like a brainless action movie - I really like them - and so this film really should have been right up my street, promising not only guns and explosions but marital arts to boot, along with a very appealing cast. Sadly, the action is the only redeeming thing here, in what's a real mess of a film.

I've often said that for a film like this you're not looking for Oscar-worthy writing or performances, but you do at least want something that flows nicely and makes you want to support the characters. There is neither of that here, with a script that's seemingly just been written to allow Wahlberg to run around shouting ALL OF THE FUCKING TIME. This is all his character does - he shouts, swears or speaks quietly and menacingly, even to his fellow Overwatch team members, making him an incredibly unlikeable character. The rest of the cast don't fair any better, hampered by the script which allows zero character development - Lauren Cohan, so brilliant on The Walking Dead, is wasted here, and so is the talented Iko Uwais, who displays excellent charisma here (and even better martial arts skills) but is let down by the story. Thankfully, the action is on point and that's what you've really come for. The violence is brutal (the film received an 18 certificate because of it, which is becoming a rarity in the UK), and the film packs in more shootouts and explosions in it's short 96 minute run time than many other longer action films, but it isn't enough to save it. This film isn't trying to be a brainless action movie, and a result it fails spectacularly.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
A poor action film that tries to paint a picture of the impact on people who undertake black ops, unsuccessfully. Strong action can't save a terrible script that does no favours for the talented cast on display here. Catch it on streaming services or TV at another time.

Film Review: The Predator (2018)

Hunter becomes hunted

The Predator (15)

Starring: Boyd Holbrook, Olivia Munn, Jacob Tremblay

Director: Shane Black

The Plot: A Predator travels to Earth and crash-lands in Mexico, where Captain Quinn McKenna (Holbrook) is operating. McKenna survives the encounter and steals some of its gear, while the Predator is subdued by a secret branch of the US military and taken for study. Dr Casey Bracket (Munn) is called in to study the creature, while McKenna is debriefed and held with a ragtag group of ex-soldiers. Unbeknownst to them, McKenna's young son Rory (Tremblay) finds the stolen gear and activates it, summoning not only the captured Predator but also a new, bigger, more dangerous version to Earth as well. McKenna will need to team up with both Bracket and his crazy new unit to save his son . . .

Check out the trailer for the film here.

Review: In the world of eighties action movies, Predator ranks among the very best and earned itself a cult following. Sadly though, over the years the various sequels and spin-offs have never managed to live up to the original, but fans were excited when last year, Shane Black announced that he would be writing and directing a new instalment of the Predator franchise and promised it would go back to what made the first film so exciting. Not only is Black an extremely talented individual - over his career he's brought us the Lethal Weapon series, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and in more recent years Iron Man 3 and The Nice Guys - but he was also a cast member of Predator, playing squad member Hawkins who's remembered by most for cracking the infamous "pussy" joke. Given his connection to the original film and his excellent track record, expectations for this film were rightly very high. I'm disappointed to tell you The Predator fails to meet those expectations, and then some.

Why does it go so wrong then? Well, I'm sorry to say that the script is the biggest culprit, which is such a shame given Black's talent. The plot of the film is ridiculously complicated - it took me a while to try and condense it down into my summary above, and that's with a lot of stuff left out - and for an action movie with sci-fi elements it just doesn't need to be. Black has tried to both replicate the feel of the original but also expand the concept, backstory and locations and it just doesn't work, something that the lacklustre sequels and spinoffs also tried and failed. A big reason why the original Predator worked so well was its simplicity - a group of soldiers in a jungle hunted by a deadly alien. That's it. The Predator can't replicate this due to the multiple story threads and locations, and it suffers for it, particularly in the third act which turns into a shambolic mess of plot holes and poor editing, giving the impression of something very rushed. The ending would have us believe, for example, that the Predator which arrives first (the one being hunted by the film's new super-Predator) actually came to Earth to help humanity, despite the first thing it does on landing is string one of McKenna's squad up by his guts. On top of this there's poor acting across the board, with the exception of the young Jacob Tremblay who does well as McKenna's son who has Asperger's syndrome. You don't expect Oscar performances in a film like this, but everyone is really bad, even Olivia Munn who's usually terrific. Her character, a biologist who just happens to have combat skills rivalling an elite soldier, is particularly hard to take seriously. Kudos to Black however for giving a small role to the legendary JAKE FUCKING BUSEY, who deserves both the capitalisation and the expletive.

The film isn't without its redeeming qualities though, particularly if you're a fan of the franchise. It looks good visually, with particular attention paid to the Predator and it's deadly equipment, including its iconic cloaking field, and the familiar score and sound effects from the first film are present and correct. There's also a lot of violent, gory action, which is exactly what you're looking for here. There's even some humour, mostly from the crazy ex-soldiers that McKenna has to team up with but Olivia Munn gets a few good lines too. There's also some very nice callouts to the previous films as well: both Predator and Predator 2 are referenced (although, wisely, both AvP films aren't mentioned) as events that happened, at one point a character shouts "Get to the chopper!" and, on seeing the Predator for the first time, Olivia Munn says "You're one pretty motherfucker." These are all nice little moments that bring the nostalgia fans were looking for, but sadly, it's not enough to salvage this mess.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
A film made with good intentions, but ruined by a poor, overly-complicated story that goes particularly off the rails at the end. There's good action and a lot of nice callouts to previous Predator films, but this isn't enough to make up for the film's problems. A real shame.

Film Review: The Miseduction of Cameron Post (2018)

Love is love

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (15)

Starring: Chloë Grace Moretz, Jennifer Ehle, John Gallagher Jr, Sasha Lane, Forrest Goodluck

Director: Desiree Akhavan

The Plot: It's 1993, and 15 year-old Cameron Post (Moretz) has a big secret - she's gay, something her devoutly Christian family considers a sin. When she's caught being intimate with another girl, her aunt sends her to a religious camp called God's Promise, run by Dr Lydia Marsh (Ehle) and her brother Reverend Rick (Gallagher Jr). The camp offers controversial gay conversion therapies to young people, claiming to "cure" them through their ultra-strict religious teachings. Cameron struggles against the camp's teachings and environment, and while she makes friends with the similar-minded Jane (Lane) and Adam (Goodluck), she must make a tough decision about her life and beliefs.

Check out the trailer for the film here.

Review: I've been looking forward to this film for some time, as it's been generating hype since the beginning of the year when it took the top prize at the Sundance film festival in January. It's based on a novel by Emily M. Danforth that was published back in 2012, and I must admit I hadn't heard of it before now, but from what I gather it's been widely praised; a few small alterations have been made for the film, notably ageing Cameron up from 12 to 15 and skipping the book's opening that tells of her parents sadly dying in a car crash, but this doesn't impact negatively. The story itself is a massively controversial subject for both a book and a film to cover - attempting to cast criticism on a particular religion for their practises is a dangerous thing for anyone to do these days, no matter how strongly you may feel about the subject matter, and the topic that this film deals with - the "curing" of a sexuality perceived as being a sickness - is something that I personally find abhorrent. Cameron Post deals with this by taking a non-judgemental approach, and it works.

The overwhelming tone of the film is one of observance. Rather than explicitly passing judgement, the film instead simply aims to provide a window into this particular aspect of (in this case, American) religious society to allow us, the audience, to make our own decisions about how we feel about it. While the story is arguably on Cameron's side, she isn't glorified in any way and is just shown for what she is - a young girl getting to grips with her sexuality, in an environment that forbids it. The film doesn't set out to portray what's going on at the camp as right or wrong, but it also doesn't shy away from showing the harshness of the world Cameron finds herself in once she's literally dumped at God's Promise without a say in the matter: despite its lack of fences and charming rural location the place has shades of a prison, with its "disciples" given strict rules to follow, and the claustrophobic framing of its interior shots reinforce this very effectively. Then you have the core of the story itself, the "treatment" the young kids are given for their "same sex attraction", as Dr Marsh and Reverend Rick refer to it as. It's this element that will have the most emotional impact on viewers - what kind of impact I obviously can't say, as there will be people who watch this film with strong religious beliefs and think what's being done is right, and there will be people who think the opposite. By taking the very neutral approach of presenting us with something that goes on in society, and inviting us to make our own minds up about it, director Desiree Akhavan and her fellow screenwriter Cecilia Frugiuele have made the right choice. This approach doesn't work for all films, but it does here.

The film is, understandably, driven by the central performance from Chloë Grace Moretz. As Cameron, this is the world as seen through her eyes, and Moretz gives a subtle, restrained performance that's honestly one of her best. It took me a while to appreciate it: Cameron is a relatively quiet character in terms of speaking out about what she's feeling for the majority of the film, so conflicted is she about her sexuality compared against what her family and the camp is telling her, and it's only towards the end that her real fire about her situation begins to come out. Moretz does well throughout, particularly in an emotional moment where she secretly calls her aunt (phone calls aren't usually allowed for the "disciples") and is refused her plea to come home, but also in the film's two love scenes that aren't at all titillating and very much have the feel of awkward, youthful encounters. Cameron finishes the story as a character who's much more confident about who she is and what she perceives to be wrong, and her transition to this is a believable one thanks to Moretz's performance.

Despite the focus very much being on Moretz, the rest of the cast all do well too. As Dr Marsh, Jennifer Ehle is both cold and unwavering in her faith and beliefs and to me came across as a vile character, in a very effective performance. As her brother Rick, Gallagher Jr is also very good - he's supposedly a poster boy for his sister's "cure", having been a homosexual man in the past, but there's the suggestion that this might still be the case and he has some scenes where his more vulnerable side becomes apparent. I was also impressed with both Sasha Lane and Forrest Goodluck as Jane and Adam, Cameron's fellow campers who befriend her and end up becoming an important influence on her. Both are dealing with similar issues to Cameron, and Lane and Goodluck both put in believable, likeable performances.

There are some negatives to be found, of course. At 91 minutes it has a very short run time, and I felt (for a change) that it actually would have benefited from being longer. The ending is also left open - following her decision to leave the camp, it would have been nice to have seen (however briefly) where Cameron goes from there, but this is left to the audience to imagine. I should also make a point of acknowledging that while I very much liked the approach the film took in how it doesn't judge, some viewers may be put off by that.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
A compelling story that deals with a very controversial subject, without casting judgement and instead opening it up to the audience to decide on how they feel about what's being presented. A strong performance from Chloë Grace Moretz drives the film, even through it's more unsettling moments. Highly recommended.

Film Review: Searching (2018)

How well do you know someone?

Searching (12A)

Starring: John Cho, Michelle La, Debra Messing

Director: Aneesh Chaganty

The Plot: David Kim (Cho) is a single parent to sixteen year-old Margot (La), and the two share what he believes is a strong relationship. David's world is rocked, however, when one night Margot suddenly goes missing, without any indication why. He goes to the police, and Detective Vick (Messing) begins an investigation, but David frantically carries out his own search by going into Margot's social media and talking with her friends - and this reveals a very different version of his daughter than he thought he knew. As the days pass and the circumstances grow more and more mysterious, David faces many different and difficult questions: has Margot run away? Has she been kidnapped? Is she still alive? And is he somehow part of the reason why?

Check out the trailer for the film here.

Review: It's fair to say that the Internet dominates today's society. More and more aspects of our lives have come to revolve around it, particularly when it comes to smartphones, computers and social media, allowing us to connect to other people in ways that weren't possible before, for both good and bad. It's become the norm, and over the last few years in particular films have really started to embrace this in the stories they tell and how they tell visually tell them. Take 2014's Men, Women & Children for example - a film that explores how the Internet affects the relationships of different people, and frequently shows its characters interacting via apps that pop up on the screen as colourful bubbles with their chats. In the same year, the horror film Unfriended went a step further and told its story entirely from the static view of a character's laptop screen, the characters themselves only appearing via its webcam and group chat programs. Searching takes that concept and ramps it up a notch, telling an intriguing tale of mystery in a very original and effective visual way.

Searching is told entirely from the screens of multiple devices and media: the desktop of Michelle's laptop, Facetime calls, phone screens, live streaming websites, CCTV cameras, online news videos, hidden cameras, and various social media like Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr. There isn't a single scene that's presented in the traditional way that a film is shot, with every one framed as if you're viewing it on a screen of a device of some kind, and I believe I'm right in saying that this is the first film to ever present its story like this - Unfriended comes close, as I mentioned, but that was one static shot. The sheer variety of ways that Searching presents itself, and the effortless way in which it swaps between them, is both unique and very effective. The opening sequence is particularly good: we see Margot growing up and the technology that David uses to record memories of her changing as time goes by, and it engages you emotionally from the start as we see his wife Pamela at first beat but then succumb to cancer when Margot reaches the age of 14. It sets up both the visual style and the tone of the story that's to follow very well.

The main story of Margot's disappearance is very clever one, featuring lots of twists and turns deliberately intended to make you follow David's increasingly desperate journey, often jumping to the wrong conclusions while at the same time presenting you with some clues that the more observant members of the audience will pick up on and correctly guess where the story is heading. It's very good writing (co-written by director Aneesh Chaganty and Sev Ohanian) and, considering it's 12A rating, gets to explore some very dark themes that are relevant in today's society: grief at the loss of a loved one, cyber-stalking, and in David's case particularly, the thin line between desperation and obsession. Margot is a bit of an enigma, appearing mostly through past recordings on a live streaming website, and Michelle La does a good job of capturing both her true sadness and the happier mask that she displays to her father. It's John Cho as David, however, that provides the real driving force of the film.

Cho is most well known for comedy roles. If you're my age, your first introduction to him was likely as the guy who created the word "MILF" in American Pie, and for many others he'll be most well-known as Harold from the Harold & Kumar series. He's been in a lot of things since then, including the modern Star Trek films as Mr Sulu, but Searching is his first leading, serious role, and he's excellent. David manages to be both a sympathetic character and an unlikeable one: he at first seems like a loving father, clearly still affected by the loss of his wife and as a result perhaps a bit more protective of his daughter than he needs to be, but as the story unfolds the uglier aspects of David's personality come out as he succumbs to desperation and frustration. He makes several choices without even considering the moral impact of them, even going as far as to accuse his own brother of having an affair with Margot. Ultimately his character doesn't go too far down this road, remaining one that the audience can get behind, but Cho handles all these different aspects of David's personality very well and, based on this performance, clearly shows he's capable of leading, dramatic roles. It's his performance that drives the story along, and it's David that ultimately provides the key to solving the mystery of Margot's disappearance.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Searching is a very unique, interesting tale of mystery and suspense. Given it's 12A rating it isn't able to dive too far into the dark themes it deals with and doesn't examine the outcome of some of the moral choices that David makes, but both the visual style and the story itself are very effective and it's driven by a fantastic performance from John Cho. Highly recommended!